Page 46 of Shattered Hearts
“Where are you?” I sprint for my motorcycle parked by the warehouse exit. I’m out of there so fast, I don’t even remember how I came to be ripping through the New York City streets.
I violate every road rule in the book as I tear through the city toward Chinatown, my body smoldering with rage and fear.
Not again.Don’t let me be too late a second time.
By the time I whip onto Riley’s street, I’m so amped up, I almost cut the turn too tight and tip over. My bike roars into the alleyway behind the flower shop, and I sprint toward the staircase that leads up to her apartment.
“I just want a fucking answer.”
The slurred, angry voice fuels my fury as I race up the stairs.
Inside, the fucker in question slumps against her bedroom door, wielding a gun. I can’t see his face, only his brown hair.He’s thicker and taller than I am, but I’ve killed bigger men than him in my sleep.
“What was wrong withme?”He puts a bullet through Riley’s door.
The world stops spinning. My stomach hangs suspended in the air.
Is she…alive?
The millisecond I hear Riley’s quaking sobs on the other side, I lose my shit.
No one makes her cry like that.
The chemical reaction of my fury and relief fuse into a rage so hot, I’m combustible.
I slam the back of her attacker’s head into the doorjamb. He collapses with a grunt.
Rage paints my vision red as my typical restraint throttles down to zero. This fucker is going to get all of me today, the full and complete Painful Death by Finn Gallagher experience.
I curb-stomp his wrist with vengeance, enjoying the tender snap of his bones beneath the steel-reinforced heel of my combat boots. A feral shriek of pain bounces off Riley’s ceiling. His hand releases the gun, sending it clattering to the floor.
Time to pull out the boys.
My father gifted me my first set of brass knuckles the day I became an enforcer. The boys, as I call them, are spiked, made of iron, and weigh almost as much as my guns. Killing someone with them is too easy.
On a normal day, I leave them alone. Unless I’m livid or I’ve found myself an occasion where I want to see some fucking teeth on the floor.
Like tonight.
The asshole mutters and stumbles back to his feet, head lolling to one side. I slide on the knuckles.
Damage his internal organs or disfigure that face first? Decisions, decisions…
But when he gets his bearings enough to face me, a commercial break interrupts my frenzy. For a moment, surprise washes my mind clean.
I recognize this drunk dipshit. He’s one of the guys who mugged me last Sunday, the one who didn’t get to taste my butterfly knife, the only one left standing after his living friends ran off, wounded.
On his neck, I spy the same tattoo the big guy had on his arm. The Celtic cross.
“You again.” He recognizes me too.
As I stride toward him, my fury returns, erupting at a higher octave than before. I haven’t been this angry in a very long time.
Following me? Fine. Comes with the territory. Attacking me? His mistake, and his funeral. Following me, attacking me, and then doing the same to Riley to get to me?
By the time I’m done with him, hell’s going to look like a trip to the Bahamas.
I slug him in the jaw. Blood and spittle spray the windowpane as I follow up with a gut-check. Now, thanks to the spikes, there are four holes in his face and abdomen.